LEWISTON — Ten years ago, filmmaker Michael Maglaras first screened his first film, “Cleophas and His Own,” about the American modernist master painter and Lewiston native Marsden Hartley.

At 6:30 p.m. April 9, the film returns to Lewiston to celebrate its 10th anniversary on the opening night of the Emerge Film Festival at the Community Little Theatre, 30 Academy St., Auburn.

Acknowledged as one of the four or five most important American painters of the first half of the 20th century, Hartley died a Mainer in Ellsworth in September 1943.

In 2008, his painting, “Lighthouse,” sold for $6.3 million and is the most expensive piece of American Modernist artwork ever sold at auction.

Tickets will be $10 at the door. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit http://ow.ly/KQCpt. To purchase a DVD, go to http://ow.ly/KR4YW.

“Cleophas” is set in the late summer of 1943 in the Downeast Maine village of Corea, where Hartley had spent the preceding two summers, living with the Young family in this quiet and remote fishing village.

Aside from a short quote at the start of the film, every word in the film is from Hartley’s epic and secret narrative discovered at the time of his death.

Maglaras is now completing his sixth film in ten years. “Enough to Live On: The Arts of the WPA” will premiere at the New Britain Museum of American Art in May and will screen in Maine in October.